Notices by Chip (bytex64@awesome.garden)

@whitequark The ability to use the building blocks to script my own variant protocols has been very handy. I built a script for doing SMBus battery queries in about an hour. And another time I built a reader for old I2C EEPROMs (the <128 byte ones that are addressed purely through the I2C address).

@botvolution Genuinely that looks pretty good for hand work.

@botvolution That’s rough. I would hope they have a local subsidiary distributor that can get around any US distribution, but I don’t really know how they’re structured.

Ordering from the US, it seems to be random which items have tariffs and which don’t. Some are obviously because of the country of origin, but some stuff is clearly made in China but doesn’t. I think maybe they just have sufficient stock and don’t plan to order any more soon. ᖍ(ᐙ)ᖌ

@botvolution I just ordered parts a couple days ago, thankfully. But I’ve got PCBs in transit from Germany and no idea what’s going to happen there. :/

@foone APRILCOT!

@botvolution @MLE_online Probably worth noting that the colors will matter. White + red is roughly 5V, but if you want like, white and blue it probably won’t work or will be very dim, because white/blue LEDs have a larger voltage drop before they start producing light.

@GossiTheDog I suspect the bulk of that is the massive influx into pixelfed.

I'm experimenting with hand-drawn traces. I'm trying to find that classic pre-CAD PCB look with digital tools. The process isn't too onerous. I exported some layers from KiCad in SVG format and loaded them in Inkscape. From there, you can just draw another layer of hand-drawn copper, save that, then reimport it into KiCad as a graphic on the copper layer. You can even DRC check it!

I just freehanded some lines and simplified them, then adjusted manually. But stylistically, it still looks a lot like I drew some lines in Inkscape. You can see down on the connection between R6 and D5 I drew the teardrops. Even with janky teardrops that small variation in trace width looks a lot more legit. Would be nice to find some way of automating that, but I'm probably way outside the normal use case on both KiCad and Inkscape.

@jmorris The sense of too much is hard to convey with just a few images. It’s well organized into pages and makes sense. It just keeps going and it’s the sum total of it that makes it overwhelming. Here’s the service manual where it all lives: https://segaretro.org/images/4/4e/Sega_Service_Manual_-_Sega_Saturn_%28PAL%29_-_013-1_-_June_1995.pdf

@jmorris But here is the block diagram from the manual that kind of captures the madness.

Y’all ever looked at Sega Saturn schematics? Shit is wild, man. It’s like they just kept adding processors and RAM chips until the board was full.

A friend of mine had an extra(!) TRS-80 Model 100 and offered to send it to me. I of course said yes!

Worked when I got it, but immediately started having LCD contrast issues. I found an article that describes my experience exactly, so hopefully this is just some old, tired caps. http://technobly.com/2016/08/21/fixing-a-trs-80-model-100-lcd-issue/

@freedosproject Alright, found it. So I have, archived from an old floppy disk, the shareware version of Galaxy 2.3. At this point, it wasn't aiming at WordPerfect - it was definitely a WordStar clone. There was no tracking of how many times or how long you use it at this point.

I also have a shareware copy of 2.42 that I got from the web somewhere. It's very similar, but it has a slightly updated logo. It does track how many times you use it (but I don't know if it cuts you off).

@freedosproject Oh interesting. The version I had definitely didn’t have that limitation. I used it for years. When I’m back at my computer I’ll try to track down the particular version I had.

@freedosproject I used a shareware version of Galaxy a ton when I was a kid. It still puts me in a good head space to write when I bring it up today.

@csepp The main thread for this project is here: https://awesome.garden/@bytex64/109899754326079814

I just looked for the service manual and followed the instructions for tearing it down. There is some creative interpretation sometimes, but the main thing is work carefully, be organized, and take reference pictures.

Highly recommend using a piece of cardboard to organize screws for any larger repair project. There is no way I would have kept these straight even in a partitioned container. (Also WHY SO MANY TYPES OF SCREWS, 80S PRINTER DESIGNERS!?) #RetroTech #repair